AOL acquires Userplane to expand AIM network — A brief interruption of my holiday schedule to announce a great news: portfolio co Userplane has been acquired by AOL LLC a couple of weeks ago, and I just heard that the official press release is now up there.

Userplane purchased by AOL — Web messaging services company Userplane has been acquired by AOL, it was was announced this morning. Terms remain undisclosed. Founded in LA in 2001, Userplane uses Flash and Ajax to offer video, audio and text chat in the browser, in single or multiple chat rooms.

Play your own Xbox game — Microsoft is trying to turn hard-core gamers into Xbox programmers. — The company plans to show off on Monday a new set of developer tools that will let college students, hobbyists and others create their own games for the Xbox 360 console, for a Windows PC or both.

Netvibes secures a $15 million investment — NetVibes, a Paris/London based company, will announce a $15 million round of financing on Monday. Index Venture (which is a prior investor) and Accel ventures lead the investment operation which certainly is one of the largest in European internet this year …

enter windows live writer — it's official! — for the past few weeks i've been able to use a new tool just released, called windows live writer. at it's core, writer is a blogging client (i'm sure there will be other uses for it in the future, but for now, this is what i use it for).

10 Tips on Maximizing Laptop Battery Performance — I am on the planes a decent amount of the time (100,000 miles by late May) and tend to spend a chunk of my flights using my laptop. Most of the time it's productive, but it can also include a DVD or the occasional game …

HSN to offer point and shop by TV remote — See something you like on Home Shopping Network? Point your remote at the TV. Hit "select." And buy, buy, buy! — At least, that's what HSN (IACI) hopes its viewers will do. — On Monday, HSN is announcing the nation's first shop-by-remote system for digital TV customers.

Browster 2.0 makes MySpace easier to use — Browser plug in Browster released version 2.0 of its product this weekend and is aiming to make MySpace profiles easier to view. A Windows download for IE and Firefox, Browster preloads pages from search results and provides a live minibrowser when inserted lightning bolts are hovered over.

Segway launches two new models: the i2 and x2 — As rumored, Segway is launching two new versions of their still-looks-nerdy-as-ever two wheel Human Transporter. The biggest update is the new "LeanSteer" system that does away the clunky grip-based control for turning …

Getting Things Done Software Systems (Part 1 of 2) — Native Windows (offline-capable) software — Scope — While there are a great number of ways to put a Getting Things Done system into action on a Windows PC, I'd like to compare and contrast the benefits of using native Windows software like Outlook …

Lists - Group Writing Project — It's time for another ProBlogger Group Writing Project - and this time we've got prizes worth around $1250 USD (see below for details)! — The Topic — This week's topic is 'LISTS' - something regular readers will know that I'm rather fond of.